Vanitha has acquired 125 clients within a year of setting up her practice in Bangalore. Read on to find out her recipe for success.
Chennai
based Vanitha CK was a mother of two kids when she got her first assignment as
a Relationship Manager with Bajaj Capital in 2001. Later, she was promoted and
transferred to Bangalore in 2003. She completed her MBA from Alagappa
University simultaneously while working with the company.
She observed that many distributors of financial products were merely pushing products. “Company fixed deposits were very popular at that time. Unfortunately, many distributors used to recommend fixed deposits which were not necessarily of the highest quality to clients in order to earn hefty brokerage. There was no emphasis on need based advice and customer centric selling practices,” she recalls.
During her stint with Bajaj Capital, she advised her clients to discontinue their investments in such instruments and invest their hard earned money in mutual funds. Subsequently, clients noticed that some of the companies which floated these fixed deposits were unable to pay back. Clients who paid heed to Vanitha’s advice by putting money in mutual funds were happy to see that their investments doing well. This helped her win the confidence of her clients.
Vanitha then decided to explore new opportunities to make her practice purely customer centric. In 2004-05, Vanitha came to know about the concept of financial planning. She presented the idea to her seniors. Her boss was impressed by the concept and decided to introduce a fee based advisory service in Bangalore office.
Recognizing her skills, a client suggested Vanitha to start off on her own. Though she liked the idea, she refused to take it forward since she did not have a concrete idea at that time. Later in 2012, she joined Aditya Birla Money. After a short stint, she made her mind to start her advisory practice. In August 2013, she floated a firm called ‘cProfit’ in Bangalore.
Though Vanitha started straight away with 10 clients who she had dealt with earlier, she was looking for faster growth.
Vanitha
found it difficult to grow her client base further. She came out with some
innovative ideas like giving bonus to clients in form of gift voucher on
successful conversion of referrals given by them and employer-employee benefit programme
for corporate firms to grow her business. Under the employer-employee benefit
programme, she gives value added services like tax consultancy, comprehensive
financial planning etc. to the employees. Also, she conducts investor meets in
corporate houses and housing societies to increase her visibility and
engagement.
“Many of our existing investors like that approach and keep referring their known relatives and friends. We even announced a scheme called “Referestor” just to encourage them in giving referrals. Our existing investors highlight the value of service and as such even the new clients who meet us are aware of our ethical practices and standards. We conduct “Investors meet” on a quarterly basis to update our investors on the happenings," said Vanitha.
All these ideas worked well for her and in a short span of time Vanitha acquired close to 125 clients. She told Cafemutual that most of her clients came from referrals. Currently, Vanitha has an asset under advisory of Rs. 20 crore in mutual funds and Rs. 30 crore across all financial products. She has a team size of seven.
Vanitha aims to introduce a model portfolio service for retail clients in which asset allocation will be based on risk profileof clients - cautious, cautious, moderate, aggressive and very aggressive. She believes that this service will create transparency and bring uniformity in financial advisory services.
Vanitha is planning to register with SEBI as an Investment Adviser.
